More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I was five foot two with cobalt blue and black hair and massive blue eyes that lent me an expression of eternal innocence. It’s funny how biology can tell lies much more eloquently than our mouths.
Only he was too rough for that. The bright tattoos on his neck under the shadow of a days-old beard as black as spilled ink across his jaw. The worn-in leather jacket opened over a white tee with a small Hephaestus Auto Garage logo stitched onto the breast. The tee was too tight, his muscles almost obscene beneath the thin fabric.
The swoop of thick black hair falling over a tanned forehead into eyes the colour of whiskey held over a flame. The wavy locks tangled in his long lashes, and when he reached up to brush them away, I noticed the bright tattoos on the back of his hand, the letters on the base of each knuckle, and what looked like an owl with its wings spread over the sides of his
When I could finally breathe again, I flipped my thick blue hair over my shoulder and leveled him with a cool look.
“Called Boner by my friends,” he said, so straight-faced I wondered if he could actually be serious about it. “But pretty girls call me Aaron until they learn why I earned that nickname for themselves.” Despite myself, I chuckled. “You’re not serious, are you? This schtick doesn’t actually work on women.” He shrugged one shoulder, leather jacket creaking. “Whaddya think?”
I didn’t have time for boys or trouble. And this guy was the prettiest boy I’d ever met, so of course, he was trouble with a capital T.
He didn’t take himself too seriously despite his obvious confidence. His smile was more goofy than smug, his tone full of humour implied he was laughing at himself as much as he was enjoying our interlude.
“The only thing I ‘make’ is trouble.” He winked outrageously, a self-mocking smile curving one side of
“I came home from work one day, and he’d cleaned out my savings.” It hurt to admit to this beautiful man that I’d been such a fool, but I wasn’t a proud person. I’d never had much to be proud of, not my family, my prospects, or even my looks or personality. I was a pretty average girl with a pleasant face and body who was lucky to be left alone in life.
and I thought, this girl doesn’t have anyone in her life to tell her not to risk herself like this. She’s fightin’ and clawin’ for everythin’ she’s got, and what she’s got is no one. And, Blue baby, that sucker punched me. A girl like you should have a whole army’a family at your back keepin’ ya safe and makin’ ya promises they always intend to fuckin’ keep.”
“Told ya they call me Boner for a reason.” “Oh my God,” she said as her head thudded back against the metal so she could look at the sky as if actually talkin’ to the Big Man himself. “Why is your ridiculousness so charming?”
“I’ll do anythin’ to protect my family and my club, Beak,” I told him earnestly as I flicked the discarded nail onto the floor and pinched the next one. “Even if it ain’t pretty. Now, tell me what you know about the Raiders.”
Really, everything about him was a mystery besides what I could see with my eyes: his beauty, his crooked smile, and his silly sense of humour. The fact that he put himself at risk to help a random girl when she needed it. That he kissed like the devil luring innocents to sin. Yeah, so I didn’t know much, but what I knew was heady.
His voice deepening to cruel, dark tones shouldn’t have sent a vibration of energy zipping like an electrical current to my sex, but it did.
the rest of it—the tatts, the swagger, the way he’d systematically disarmed and beaten down the robbers, and that tangible charge of erotic danger surrounding him—all lent itself to an outlaw biker. I should have known ’cause I’d grown up with them.
“You wanna call me a criminal, I can’t stop ya, but I wish you’d think’a me like somethin’ less defined. Like twilight between day and night. I got darkness in me, Blue. Don’t have to tell ya that after what you saw in Beaker’s trailer. But I got light too, a fuck ton’a it. Maybe the ratio’s too close for comfort, but I thought for a second you were the kinda girl who
“I may be a dangerous man, but I’m the one in danger here. You walk out on me, that’ll ache in a way I’ve never ached ’fore. C’mon, Blue baby,
He held me so close I could feel his heartbeat against my own chest. I could taste the salt of his neck against my tongue and hear the way his breath stuttered and filtered through his laboring lungs. He held me in that way I was discovering he had that made me feel like more than a stranger.
Like more than the past I was ashamed of and the future I was scared for. Like I was just a girl and he was just a boy.
Blue fittin’ in just right like she’d been born to be at my side, it wasn’t hard to imagine more nights like this. Plantin’ her sweet ass on the back’a my bike, wakin’ up to her soft body pressed to mine, her smile a gift I got every single fuckin’ day… Yeah. Yeah, that sounded about right. She thought she wasn’t worth the trouble, but she didn’t get yet that I was the kinda man who thrived on gettin’ into messes and gettin’ out (relatively) unscathed.
He smelled the same and something about that nostalgia poured vinegar into my wounds and made tears spring to my eyes. How strange to find comfort in the arms of your abuser. How contrary to want to hug him back because my instincts as a daughter always interfered and cried out for love from the same man who loved to hurt me. I didn’t hug him back.
“The kinda love that redefines what it means to be alive is the kinda love that doesn’t come cheap. You gotta earn it, man, and sometimes that means bein’ patient, and sometimes that means fightin’ for it. If you really think Blue’s that woman
for you, you gotta trust that you’ll see her again and ’til then gotta live life knowin’ she’d want you to be happy. Maybe that’s why she left in the first place.”
bubbled and churned where Rooster’s lifelong abuse met Aaron and the Entrance chapter of The Fallen MC’s kindness. My gut hissed and churned like the Bermuda Triangle, thoughts drowning in the riptides. “Not you and not Aaron.”
“I want to be yours more than anything. And I want you to be mine.” “I already am,” I said, startin’ to fuck into her again, slow and steady, a meetin’a the ocean lappin’ at the shoreline. “Feel like I was born with
your name written on my bones, and I was just waitin’ to find ya.” “Bones,” she gasped, and the transformation’a my nickname felt right in her mouth.
I could hear his shuddered exhale over the current of the next song and grinned smugly at the results of my lewd display. I’d never done anything like this. I had never before felt empowered by my own sexuality, and in truth, it was both of us turning me on now. Every incredibly gorgeous inch of him and every inch of me, beautiful because I liked myself and so, wonderfully, did he.
“Bone deep, Blue,” he said into my hair, stroking a big, rough hand down my spine. “Forever.” “Bone deep,” I echoed because it was the truth. No matter what happened, this man was a part of me now, as elemental as my blood and marrow.
There was no hiding from Aaron, and I didn’t want to. I believed that the kind of love we shared––bone deep, lifelong––would make me palatable to him no matter what. It was just my own insecurities projecting onto him, and he didn’t deserve that. He’d shown me to treat both of us better.
“You gotta know, Blue,” he said, so serious every word resonated like a struck church bell, like a holy toll, turning his home into a sacred space and me into a reverent relic. “If I gotta go to hell and back, fight the fuckin’ devil himself, sacrifice every one’a my sins or my life itself, I’ll do it. You think you’re more trouble than you’re worth, but you gotta understand, I’ve always been the kinda man who’s not afraid to ask for trouble if it’s worth the effort, and there’s no doubt in my mind keepin’ you safe and loved is worth it all.”
Before I could respond, he pushed the bowl a little closer, drawing my attention to the letters carefully arranged
